Christian Festivals for December 2017 / January 2018

           

December
1	Eloi – a patron saint for the euro?
3	Francis Xavier  - the seasick missionary
3	Birinus – an apostle to the English
4	Osmund – the multi-talented saint
6	St Nicholas – patron saint of children
6	St Nicholas – another look at this much-loved saint
6	How Father Christmas got where he is today
7	Lazarus of Bethany – back from the tomb
11	Daniel the Stylite
17	Lazarus of Bethany
21	Winter Solstice
24	Christmas Eve
25	Christmas
	The story of the Christingle
	Why does Christmas begin with Holy Communion?
	Where did Christmas trees come from?
	Where do Christmas stockings come from?
	Why was Jesus born in a barn?
	Why the world was ready for Christmas
	The story of mince pies
	World’s oldest fake tree
	Mistletoe’s smelly history
	We three kings of Orient are... what?
	Thank Dickens for Christmas as you know it!
	Christmas and St Luke’s Gospel
	Was Jesus really born on 25th December?
	Who is ‘Santa Claus’?
26	St Stephen
26	On the Feast of St Stephen
26	Look out for Wenceslas
28	Holy Innocents
January
1	The naming of Jesus
1	Have you ever wondered where the name ‘Jesus’ comes from?
2	Basil the Great - champion of the Church
2	Basil and Gregory - lives of costly discipleship
5	Simeon Stylites - one of the weirder saints!
6	Epiphany
6	Where did the Wise Men come from?
6	What about the gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh?
8	Nathalan - an early farmer in Scotland
12	Antony Pucci - poor, plain and tongue-tied
14	Felix of Nola - saved by a spider’s web
17	Anthony of Egypt -  hermit who defied an emperor
18	Amy Carmichael, founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship
21	Meinrad (d 861) - victim of grievous bodily harm
21	St Agnes - child martyr of Rome, 304AD
25	The Conversion of St Paul
25	St Paul – the first Christian intellectual
31	Maedoc of Ferns

 

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1 December                Eloi  - a patron saint for the euro? 

It’s nearly 15 years since Europe switched over to the Euro (January 2002).  So, this is a good time to remember Eloi, bishop of Noyon, who was born in Gaul, and started out as a goldsmith.  He entered the service of Bobon, the royal treasurer.  He went on to become master of the mint for King Clotaire 1 of France.  His reputation was based not only on excellent design, but also on economical use of materials.  Not a bad example for the makers of the Euro!

Eloi’s craftmanship and friendship with the king made him very wealthy.  He gave much of his money to the poor, built a number of churches, ransomed slaves, and founded a convent in Paris and a monastery in Solignac.

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3 December                Francis Xavier - the seasick missionary

Ignatius Loyala sent his friend and follower Francis Xavier (born 1506) to the Orient as a missionary.  What a missionary!  Imagine David Livingstone, Billy Graham and the Alpha Courses rolled into one.  His mass conversions became legendary – he baptised 10,000 people in one month and in just ten years of work was credited with 700,000 conversions. 

Xavier became the most famous Jesuit missionary of all time, working so hard that he had only a few hours’ sleep each night.  He was known as ‘the Apostle of the Indies’ and ‘the apostle of Japan’.   He began by reforming Goa, which contained numerous Portuguese Catholics, notorious for cruelty to their slaves, open concubinage, and neglect of the poor.  For three years, by example, preaching and writing verses on Christian truths set to popular tunes, Francis did much to offset this betrayal of Christ by bad Christians. 

For the next seven years he worked among the Paravas in southern India, in Ceylon, Malacca, the Molucca islands, and the Malay peninsula.  He met with immense success among the low-caste but with almost none among the Brahmins. 

In 1549 he ventured on to Japan, translated an abridged statement of Christian belief, and made a hundred converts in one year at Kagoshima alone.  When he left Japan, the total number of Japanese Christians was about 2,000; within 60 years they were resisting fierce persecution, even to death. 

Wherever Xavier sailed, he left after him numerous organised Christian communities.  Not bad for a man who suffered seasickness and had trouble in learning foreign languages!

Xavier died in 1551, on his way to China.  His body was preserved and enshrined for many years.  His right arm was detached in 1615 and is still preserved in the church of the Gesu at Rome.  He was canonised by Gregory XV in 1622, and declared Patron of the Foreign Missions by Pius XI in 1927.

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3 December                Birinus – an apostle to the English

Thousands of our churches are currently involved in various mission initiatives across the UK.  If it is tough going at times, we should spare a thought for poor Birinus, a priest from Lombard, who was sent here on his own 14 centuries ago.  Pope Honorius 1 gave him the daunting task of being the apostle to Wessex.

It was about 635 that Birinus first sailed across the Channel. He planned to convert all of Wessex, and then press on into the Midlands, where no Christian preacher had ever yet been.  But once he began ministry in Wessex, Birinus found the West Saxons so pagan that he decided he better just stay among them.  

So Birinus began his ministry, endlessly travelling around Wessex, and preaching to whomever he encountered.  Gradually he became known, and his message began to seep through.

Then a great breakthrough occurred: the King of Wessex, Cynegils, asked Birinus for instruction in the Christian faith.  His daughter was going to marry Oswald, the Christian king of Northumbria, and for political reasons Cynegils now wanted to convert.   So Birinus taught and baptised Cynegils and his family, and in return they gave him the Romano-British town of Dorchester as his see, and Birinus became the first bishop of Dorchester.  

It was an excellent strategic move:  Dorchester was on a main road and river in the centre of an area of dense Anglo-Saxon settlement.  From his new ‘headquarters’,  Birinus spent his last 15 years going on to build many churches around Wessex, and to baptise many people.  Towards the end of his life Birinus dedicated a church at Winchester, which later became the ecclesiastical centre of the kingdom.  (There is no record of Wessex bishops at Dorchester after 660.)

Any lesson in all this?  Bloom where God plants you, and be faithful to your calling, however tough things may look at first, and however obscure the place.  Birinus’ obedience and faith planted Christianity in a key part of Britain, and so helped shape British history for centuries to come.

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4 December                Osmond – an immigrant before Brexit

Osmond is the saint for you if you regret Brexit, and believe that immigrants can bring good to Britain. Osmond came to England from France back in the days before EU regulations.  It was shortly after 1066, and he was a Norman, following William the Conqueror. 

Osmond himself was no soldier, but a gifted and godly man, with a great gift of administration.  He became royal chaplain, and then chancellor in 1072, producing numerous royal letters and charters for the king.  In 1078 he was made bishop of Salisbury.  As such, he completed and consecrated the cathedral, and formed such an outstanding chapter and constitution that it later became a model for other English cathedrals.  

Osmond took part in the preparation of the Domesday Book, and was present when it was presented to William in April 1086.  He died in 1099, well respected for his purity and learning, and his lack of avarice and ambition.

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6 December                St Nicholas – patron saint of children

Father Christmas seems to be as old as Europe. Once he was Woden, lashing his reindeer through the darkness of northern midwinter.  Then he encountered the Church, and She transformed him into a saint, the much-loved Nicholas, Bishop of Myra (in south-west Turkey) in the fourth century.  St Nicholas became the patron saint of children, and was given 6th December as his day.

Since the 6th century St Nicholas has been venerated in both East and West, though virtually nothing is known of his life.  Some believe he may have been one of the fathers at the Council of Nicea (325), imprisoned during the Emperor Diocletian’s persecution.  

According to legend, Nicholas was an extremely generous man.  He revived three schoolboys murdered by an innkeeper in a tub of pickles.  He rescued three young women from prostitution by giving their poverty-stricken father three bags of gold. (Hence the use of three gold balls as the pawnbroker’s signs.) 

Over the centuries many people ‘on the fringe’, including children, sailors, unmarried girls, pawnbrokers and moneylenders have claimed him as their patron.

Perhaps it was on account of St. Nicholas’ generosity that in recent centuries children began to write little notes sometime before 6th December, to tell him about the toys they specially wanted.  These notes were then left on the windowsill at night - or else on a ledge in the chimney.

But St Nicholas Day chanced to lie in the magnetic field of a much more potent festival.... and after awhile his activities were moved towards Christmas.  Then in Bavaria the children still left their notes on the windowsill, but they addressed them to Liebes Christkind - Krishkinkle as they knew him - and the saint’s part in the matter was simply to deliver the letters in heaven.
 
The most popular result of the cult of St Nicholas has been the institution of Santa Claus.  He is based on Nicholas’ patronage of children and the custom in the Low Countries of giving presents on his feast. Santa Claus has reached his zenith in America, where the Dutch Protestants of New Amsterdam (New York) united to it Nordic folklore legends of a magician who both punished naughty children and rewarded good ones with presents.

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6 December                St Nicholas – another look at this much-loved saint

One account of how Father Christmas began tells of a man named Nicholas who was born in the third centre in the Greek village of Patara, on what is today the southern coast of Turkey.  His family were both devout and wealthy, and when his parents died in an epidemic, Nicholas decided to use his inheritance to help people.  He gave to the needy, the sick, the suffering.   He dedicated his whole life to God’s service, and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man.   As a bishop in later life, he joined other bishops and priests in prison under the emperor Diocletian’s fierce persecution of Christians across the Roman Empire.

Finally released, Nicholas was all the more determined to shed abroad the news of God’s love.   He did so by giving.  One story of his generosity explains why we hang Christmas stockings over our mantelpieces today.   There was a poor family with three daughters who needed dowries if they were to marry, and not be sold into slavery.   Nicholas heard of their plight, and tossed three bags of gold into their home through an open window – thus saving the girls from a life of misery. 

The bags of gold landed in stockings or shoes left before the fire to dry.   Hence the custom of children hanging out stockings – in the hope of attracting presents of their own from St Nicholas - on Christmas Eve.  That is why three gold balls, sometimes represented as oranges, are one of the symbols of St Nicholas.

The example of St Nicholas has never been forgotten -  in bygone years boys in Germany and Poland would dress up as bishops on 6th December, and beg alms for the poor.  In the Netherlands and Belgium ‘St Nicholas’ would arrive on a steamship from Spain to ride a white horse on his gift-giving rounds.   To this day, 6th December is still the main day for gift-giving and merry-making in much of Europe.   Many feel that simple gift-giving in early Advent helps preserve a Christmas Day focus on the Christ Child.

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6 December                How Father Christmas got where he is today

One person you are bound to run into this Christmas season is Father Christmas.  These days he seems to frequent shopping malls and garden centres.  If he looks tired, just remember that he has been around a long time, and gone through a lot of transformations.  

Father Christmas wasn’t always the red-suited, white-bearded star of the retail trade that he is today.   He began life as Nicholas, born way back about AD260 in Patara, an important port on the southern coast of what is now Turkey.  When his parents died and left him a fortune, Nicholas gave it away to the poor.  He became a bishop of the nearby city of Myra, where he almost certainly suffered persecution and imprisonment at the hand of the Roman Emperor Diocletian.

Nicholas was a serious theologian: he was a participant at the First Council of Nicaea, which formulated the Creed which we still say today.   He even, reportedly, slapped another bishop in a squabble over the exact nature of the Trinity.

Nicholas died in Myra about AD343, but the stories of his generosity and kindness were just beginning.    One enduring tale tells of the three girls whom he rescued from certain prostitution by giving them gold for their dowries.  When the father confronted him to thank him, Nicholas said he should thank God alone. 

In the UK, Nicholas became the basis for Father Christmas, who emerged in Victorian times as a jolly-faced bearded character.  Meanwhile, Dutch and German settlers had taken him to America with them as Sinter Klaas and Sankt Nicklas.  

It was in America that Nicholas received his final two great breaks into real stardom.  The first was when the Rev Clement C Moore, a New York Episcopal minister, turned from his life-work of writing a Hebrew/English lexicon, to write a fun poem for his children one Christmas.  His ‘The Visit of St Nicholas’ is now universally known by its first line:  ‘T’was the Night Before Christmas’.

From Clement Moore we discovered that St Nicholas is round and pink-cheeked and white-bearded, and that he travels at night with sleigh, reindeer and a sack of toys on his back.   It was Clement Moore who also revealed that St Nicholas enters houses down chimneys and fills children’s stockings with toys and sweets.   

So how did we find out that Father Christmas wears red?   That was the US Coca-Cola advertising campaign of 1931, who finally released the latest, up-to-date pictures of Father Christmas: wearing a bright red, fur-trimmed coat and a large belt.  

These days, it is good that Father Christmas uses reindeer and doesn’t have to pay for petrol.  In order to get round all the children in the world on Christmas Eve, he will have to travel 221 million miles at an average speed of 1279 miles a second, 6,395 times the speed of sound.  For all those of us who are already exhausted just rushing around getting ready for Christmas, that is a sobering thought.

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6 December                What’s in a (Christmas) Name?

What do your family call him, that funny old man in a red robe and floppy hat who pops up everywhere at Christmas? Sometimes he’s Father Christmas, sometimes Santa Claus, and in parts of Europe he’s Saint Nicholas. That’s his real name, abbreviated to ‘Santa Claus’ by Brits and Americans who don’t like to follow the Europeans, and then turned into a more homely, cuddly kind of name for the children. Whatever he’s called, his function is the same – delivering presents to children at Christmas.
           
The first St Nicholas was a real person, about whom a few more facts were discovered this Autumn. He was bishop of Myra, in the country we now call Turkey, in the fourth century. He was known as the friend of the poor, and especially poor or abused children. At (or just before) Christmas he went around handing out presents to them, as well as rescuing some from dreadful circumstances. The red robe our modern Santa Claus wears is a vague representation of a bishop’s garment, and the floppy hat is his mitre!

The original good bishop from 1600 years ago is remembered by the Church on December 6th, and the lucky children in Belgium and the Netherlands get their presents then!
by David Winter

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7 December                Lazarus of Bethany – back from the tomb

Some people have near-death experiences.... Lazarus should be their patron saint.  Except that he went all the way, and died for four days.  He was quiet in his tomb and the mourners of Bethany were in full swing - before Jesus called him back to life.  (See John 11: 1 – 44.)

What happened next to Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary?  The New Testament never tells us, but there are some clues from early church history and legends. 

It seems that Lazarus became very popular with the early Christian Church because he was living evidence that Jesus could bring people back from the dead.  It also seems that Lazarus was NOT popular with the local Jews, for the very same reason.   They wanted to forget Jesus, and here Lazarus was still walking around, talking about resurrection...

So eventually some exasperated Jews decided to act.  According to an early Eastern tradition, they placed Lazarus and his sisters into a leaky boat and set them adrift in the Mediterranean....  where the little boat carried them safely to Cyprus. Here Lazarus became bishop and lived for another 30 years.  

Another, later, tradition has it that the boat had no rudder or oars, but still bore them safely to Gaul, where Lazarus founded a church and became the first bishop of Marseilles, so to speak... until he was martyred under Domitian (81-96AD).  

Either way, second time round, Lazarus stayed dead.  But it was thought he was still at work.  By the late Middle Ages, anyone who had a vision of the after-life knew just whom to thank for this ‘postcard from heaven’ – St Lazarus!

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11 December Daniel the Stylite  409-93

Do you know any odd Christians?   People with hearts of gold, who would never harm anyone… but who are nonetheless just plain ODD…. Well, Daniel the Stylite should be their patron saint.  Perhaps he is the proof that God can bless and use any one of us – no matter how batty some of our ideas may be.

Daniel was born in Mesopotamia in 409 into a devout Christian family.  He seems to have been an intense sort of child – when he was only 12 he became a monk.  Some years later Daniel visited Antioch, and saw the famed Simeon Stylites, the wild, hairy monk who lived his life perched high on top of a pillar, dropping his fleas and lice on the people below. 

Most of us would have walked on by, but in that moment Daniel’s vocation was born.   He climbed a ladder in order to talk to Simeon, and soon after that set out on pilgrimage.  At Constantinople he came across a disused temple, reputedly inhabited by devils.

Most of us would have walked on by, but Daniel moved straight in.  He bolted the door, and stayed inside for the next nine years. Local people fed him through a small window.  Braving hideous noises and fighting violent apparitions occupied a lot of Daniel’s time – perhaps it was like having a fifth century play-station?

Simeon Stylites died in 459, and left Daniel his lice-infested cloak – which inspired him further. With the help of some local admirers, Daniel came out of his temple and set himself up on a pillar just outside the city.  The TV programme Location, Location, Location would have approved of the view over the Bosphorus, but not the amenities.  When Daniel nearly froze to death one night, the Emperor was so worried that he built Daniel a new, more spacious home:  TWO pillars close together, with a little shelter on top. 

Daniel spent the next 33 years on top of his double pillars.  People came to him with their problems, and he comforted and advised them.  He preached every afternoon, on the love of God. He urged people to show hospitality to each other.  He prayed for people.  People loved him for it, and God blessed him, even though he did live on top of a pillar.  When he eventually died up there, his hair was four cubits long, and he had sat so long with his knees up to his chest that his bones cracked when they straightened the body. 

So next time you meet a good-hearted but eccentric Christian, take comfort – they could be far worse!

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21 December               Winter Solstice

A Midwinter festival has been a part of life since pre-Christian times. When the hours of daylight are fewest, the warmth of the sun weakest, and life itself seemingly at a standstill, our ancestors, the pagan peoples of Europe and Western Asia, kept festival by lighting bonfires and decorating their buildings with evergreens. 

Perhaps they believed that the dying sun could be enheartened by fire, and the life of the buried seed assured by the presence of evergreen branches.

With the advent of Christianity, the Spring gods became identified with Christ, and the birthday of the sun with the birthday of the Light of the World.

The early church father Tertullian did not approve of Christmas decorations. “Let those who have no light in themselves light candles!... You are the light of the world, you are the tree ever green....”  But by the time of St Gregory and St Augustine, four centuries later, this had changed.  Pope Gregory instructed Augustine not to worry about harmless outward customs, as long as the right God be worshipped through them.  And so many Anglo-Saxon customs were never discarded, but simply endowed with a new significance. 

By 1598 one John Stow of London wrote how: ‘Against the feast of Christmas, every man’s house, as also their parish churches, were decked with holme, ivie, bayes, and whatsoever the season of the yeare afforded to be greene.’

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24 December              Christmas Eve
 
How do you celebrate Christmas Eve?  It has its own customs, the most popular of which is going to Midnight Mass, or the Christ-Mas.  This is the only Mass of the year that is allowed to start after sunset.  In Catholic countries such as Spain, Italy and Poland, Midnight Mass is in fact the most important church service of the entire Christmas season, and many people traditionally fast beforehand.  In other countries, such as Belgium and Denmark, people dine during the evening, and then go on to the Midnight Service.

The British are behind some countries when it comes to exchanging presents:  in Germany,  Sweden and Portugal the custom is to exchange on Christmas Eve.  But the British are ahead of Serbia and Slovakia, where the Christmas tree is not even brought into the house and decorated until Christmas Eve.

Yule logs are not so popular since the decline of the fireplace, but traditionally it was lit on Christmas Eve from a bit of the previous year’s log, and then would be burned non-stop until 12th Night (6th January).   Tradition also decreed that any greenery such as holly, ivy or mistletoe must wait until Christmas Eve until being brought into the house.

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25 December Christmas:       The story of the Christingle

The word ‘Christingle’ actually means ‘Christ Light’, and celebrates the light of Jesus coming into the world.   Stories of how the Christingle began look back to the Moravian Church, which is found in the Czech Republic.  The Moravians have held Christingle services for more than 200 years, and according to them, this is how the first Christingle might have been made:

Many years ago the children in a village were asked to bring a Christmas gift to put beside the crib in the church.  One family was very poor, and had no money for gifts, but the three children were still determined to take something.  The only nice thing they had was an orange, so they decided to give the Christ-child that. 

But then they discovered the top was going green, so the eldest cut it out, and put a candle in the hole.  To add some colour, one of the girls took a red ribbon from her hair and tied it around the middle of the orange.    It was hard to make the ribbon stay still, so they fastened it in place with toothpicks.  The toothpicks looked a bit bare, so the youngest child added some raisins to them.  

The children took their decorated orange lantern to the church for the Christmas Mass.  The other children sneered at their meagre gift, but the priest seized upon it with joy.  He held it up as an example of the true understanding of the meaning of Christmas, for the following reasons:  the orange is round, like the world; the candle gives us light in the dark, like the love of God; the red ribbon goes round the ‘world’, as a symbol of Christ’s blood, given for everyone;  the four sticks point in all directions, and symbolise that God is over all: North, South, East and West; and the fruit and nuts remind us of God’s blessings.

The Children’s Society first introduced the Christingle Service to The Church of England in 1968, and it has since become a popular event in the church calendar.  This candlelit celebration is an ideal way to share the key messages of the Christian faith, while helping to raise vital funds to help vulnerable children across the country.  Visit:  www.childrenssociety.org.uk

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25        Christingle:  a generous present from the Moravians to the Churches

It is the Moravians whom we have to thank for bringing us the Christingle.  Especially one Moravian clergyman: John de Watteville.

On 20th December, 1747, John de Watteville was taking a children’s service in his Moravian church in Marienborn, Germany.   He led the children in some hymns, and read out verses which the children themselves had written to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Then he explained to the children that true happiness only comes through knowing Jesus.  Jesus, said John de Watteville, “has kindled in each little heart a flame which keeps burning to their joy and our happiness”.

John de Watteville then went on to illustrate that ‘flame’.   He gave each child a little lighted wax candle, tied around with a red ribbon.   He ended his service with a little prayer:   “Lord Jesus, kindle a flame in these children’s hearts, that theirs like Thine become”.

The visual aid was a great success with the children; for the Marienborn Diary for that day concludes: “hereupon the children went full of joy with their lighted candles to their rooms and so went glad and happy to bed”.

The candle and red ribbon were remembered the following year, and the following after that.... The years came and went, and as the Moravians began to travel beyond Germany, so they took the custom with them:  to Labrador, to Pennsylvania, to Tibet and Suriname, to the Caribbean and South Africa.   In each country the Christians adapted it for their own use.

No one knows for certain when the word ‘Christingle’ was first used with regard to the custom.   No one even knows where the word ‘Christingle’ comes from.   Some people say it is from the old Saxon word ‘ingle’ (fire), meaning ‘Christ-fire or light’. Another theory is that it derives from the German ‘engel’ (angel), meaning ‘Christ-angel’. 

In any event, the symbolism of Christingle gradually developed, until today the Moravians in the British Province use an orange, representing the world, with a lighted candle to represent Christ, the Light of the World. Nuts, raisins and sweets on cocktail sticks around the candle represent God’s bounty and goodness in providing the fruits of the earth. Red paper, forming a frill around the base of the candle, reminds us of the blood of Christ shed for all people on the cross at Calvary.

In Moravian churches, the Christingle Service is usually held on the Sunday before Christmas or on Christmas Eve. The website for the Moravian Church says:  “We are glad that the Moravian Church has been able to make this contribution to the wider Christian world.”

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Christmas:       Why does it begin at midnight with Holy Communion? 

The hour was first chosen at Rome in the fifth century to symbolise the idea that Christ was born at midnight – a mystical idea in no way hindered by historical evidence!  No one knows the hour of his birth. 

Certainly in recent times, Holy Communion at midnight on Christmas morning has proved popular with modern families.  One British writer pointed out its “domestic convenience” in 1947: “for where there are children and no servants, husband and wife may be unable to communicate at any other time.”  (So things don’t change, then!)

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Christmas:  The man who married Mary

The traditional Nativity scene on our Christmas cards has Mary with the Holy Babe. Around her are the shepherds and Magi. We may also see stable animals, angels and a star! While Joseph is often included, his presence seems to be of minor importance. After all, we praise God for Jesus with our familiar Christmas carols, mentioning angels, shepherds, Wise men and Mary but the name of Joseph is absent! Why is Joseph given a low profile?  For he is a man to be remembered.

Joseph was a resident of Nazareth. He worked as a carpenter and his skills would have included making furniture, repairing buildings and crafting agricultural tools. Although Joseph had an honourable profession, he would not have been a man of great wealth.

The gospel writers Matthew and Luke give Joseph a few brief mentions. After the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary go to the temple in Jerusalem to dedicate the Baby to God. Afterwards, they flee into Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod and much later return to Nazareth. Twelve years later, Mary and Joseph go with Jesus to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. Here they lose Jesus, and find Him in the Temple talking with religious leaders!

Apart from these verses, the New Testament is silent about the rest of Joseph’s life. However, we do know that Joseph was father to other children by Mary. His four sons are named and they had at least two daughters.  (See Matthew 13:55)

And we also know that Joseph was someone who quietly and humbly took on the awesome role in caring for the early life of the Son of God. Joseph would have taught Jesus many things – not just the skills of a labourer, but the lore of the countryside which was evident in our Lord’s teaching. Jesus grew up within a loving family and described God as ‘Father’, knowing also the good fatherly qualities of Joseph.

In the Christmas story, Joseph is placed into a situation that brought him misunderstanding and suspicion. But Joseph remained faithful in the knowledge that as long as God had spoken, the opinion of others mattered little. Before Jesus began His ministry it is believed that Joseph died. It is likely Jesus took on many of his father’s responsibilities before He left home.

In the eyes of the world, Joseph was a nobody. He was not a man of valour, fame and fortune. But he was the one who had parental responsibility for the greatest person who has ever lived!

It is sad that we often equate ordinariness with ineffectiveness. Down the ages, God has used many ordinary people to accomplish great things. God continues to use ordinary people. Like Joseph, we need to know that doing God’s will is the most important thing in life. May we, this Christmas, respond to God’s call to us and please Him in all that we do.

By Lester Amann

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Christmas:  And there were shepherds   

Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus is brilliantly told – the angel’s visit to Mary to tell her she would be mother of the long-promised Messiah, the old priest in the Temple told by another angel that his wife would have a son to be called ‘John’, who would prepare the people of Israel for that event, and then Mary and Joseph making the 60 mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, as required by the Roman census. When they got there, no room at the inn, and they settled instead for a convenient stable, where Mary gave birth to a boy child.

Suddenly, Luke changes the tone. ‘And there were shepherds …’ – that’s what he actually wrote, just like that. ‘And there were shepherds’, doing exactly what shepherds do, looking after their flocks by night. But this night was different: yet another angelic message – a call to abandon their sheep and go into Bethlehem to see the baby Messiah. They were given directions and a ‘sign’ to identify Him. He would be lying in a feeding trough. Well, at least they would recognise that.

And why the shepherds, in this glorious story of our salvation? Because the event needed witnesses, and the chosen witnesses would be this bunch of scruffy, smelly shepherds straight from the sheep-pen.  Nothing could speak more eloquently of God’s purpose than that. This was not a Saviour for the strong, rich and powerful, but for everybody. The carpenter and his wife guarded the Saviour of the world, and the very first witnesses were not kings or priests but a handful of shepherds.

By David Winter

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Christmas:       Where did Christmas trees come from?

There are two early stories that mention fir trees.  The first involves St Boniface, who went to Germany in the 8th century as a missionary and found people sacrificing a child to their god under an oak tree.  Boniface was appalled, and rescued the child. He then chopped down the oak tree and found a tiny fir tree growing nearby.  He gave this to the people and said: “This is a symbol of life. Whenever you look at this tree, remember the Christ-child who is the one who will give you life, because he gave his life for you.”

The second early fir tree story involves Martin Luther in the 16th century.  It is said that one year he decided to drag a fir tree into his home and to decorate it with candles. He used it as a visual aid, telling people that the candles symbolised Jesus as the light of the world, and the evergreen tree symbolised the eternal life that Jesus gives to us.  Many of the people who followed Luther were struck by the idea, and took up the custom.

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Christmas:       Where did Christmas stockings come from?

No one is really sure, but a story is told of St Nicholas, a bishop who lived in the 4th century, who may have started the custom by accident.  St Nicholas was of a wealthy family, and of a generous heart.  As Christmas approached one year, he wanted to help a poor family whom he knew, but he did not want them to know it was him.  So he climbed up on their roof on Christmas Eve and dropped some coins down the chimney. 

The next morning the coins, to the great surprise of the family, were found in the stockings of the ladies, who had hung them to dry by the fire the night before. Every year after that they put their stockings out, in the hope that some more money would fall into them.  They told the story of this amazing appearance to their friends and neighbours, and the custom caught on.

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Christmas:       Why was Jesus born in a barn?

Our pretty Christmas cards do not do it justice – the stable that Jesus was born in would have been smelly, dirty, and full of mess.   So why did God not provide something better for His beloved Son?   Why let Joseph and Mary scrounge around until they ended up in a smelly stable?  

Perhaps because the King of Kings being born in a foul stable is a perfect picture of redemption.  Jesus came from glory into a world filled with the dirt, filth and darkness of sin.   And Jesus was not put off by darkness in the least – instead, He came to be the Light of the World. Thank God for His unspeakable gift.   No wonder the angels sang “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14)

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Christmas:       Why the world was ready for Christmas

Ever wonder why Jesus was born when He was?  The Bible tells us that “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son…” The Jewish people had been waiting for their Messiah for centuries.  Why did God send Him precisely when He did? 

Many biblical scholars believe that the ‘time had fully come’ for Jesus because of the politics of the time.  The Roman Empire’s sheer size and dominance had achieved something unique in world history:  the opportunity for travel from Bethlehem to Berwick on Tweed without ever crossing into ‘enemy territory’ or needing a ‘passport’.   For the first time ever, it was possible for ‘common’ people to travel wide and far, and quickly spread news and ideas.  And all you needed were two languages - Greek to the east of Rome, and Latin to the west and north.   You could set sail from Joppa (Tel Aviv) and head for any port on the Med.  And the Roman roads ran straight and true throughout the empire.  

So the Roman Empire achieved something it never intended:  it helped spread news of Christianity far and wide for 400 years.  After that, the Empire crumbled, and the borders shut down.  Not until the 19th century would people again roam so freely.   The time for Jesus to be born, and for news of Him to be able to travel, had indeed ‘fully come’. 

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Christmas:       The story of mince pies

Did you know that mince pies have been traditional English Christmas fare since the Middle Ages, when meat was a key ingredient?  The addition of spices, suet and alcohol to meat came about because it was an alternative to salting and smoking in order to preserve the food. Mince pies used to be a different shape - cradle-shaped with a pastry baby Jesus on top.

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Christmas:       World’s oldest fake tree

Did you know that it is a family in Wiltshire, the Parkers, who claim to own the world’s oldest artificial Christmas tree?  It was bought in 1886, and is still put up every year.

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Christmas:       Mistletoe’s smelly history

Did you know that the word ‘mistletoe’ means dung on a tree?  The Anglo-Saxons thought that mistletoe grew in trees where birds had left their droppings.  Mistel means dung, and tan means twig.

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Christmas:       We three kings of Orient are... what?

“A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey, in.  The way’s deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter.”  

It was 1622, and the Bishop of Winchester, Launcelot Andrews, was preaching a magnificent sermon to King James I.  Reckoned one of the best preachers ever, Launcelot Andrews’ words were later taken up by T S Eliot and transformed into his wonderful poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’.  What a vivid picture – we can see it all!   The camels’ breath steaming in the night air as the kings, in their gorgeous robes of silk and cloth-of-gold, and clutching their precious gifts, kneel to adore the baby in the manger.

Yet the Bible does not give us as much detail as some people think.  Tradition down the centuries has added a great deal more.  For instance, we know from St Matthew that the magi were ‘wise’, or learned men of some sort, but we do not know if they were kings or not.    The Bible tells us there were several; tradition has decided upon three, and even named them: Balthassar, Melchior, and Caspar (or Gaspar).  But the Bible does tell us that the magi gave baby Jesus three highly symbolic gifts: gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.  Gold stands for kingship, frankincense for worship, and myrrh for anointing – anticipating his death.

There is a lovely ancient mosaic in Ravenna, Italy, that is 1,500 years old.  It depicts the wise men in oriental garb of trousers and Phrygian caps, carrying their gifts past palm trees towards the star that they followed... straight to Jesus. 

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Christmas:       Thank Dickens for Christmas as you know it!

Ever wonder where many of our Christmas traditions come from?   A surprising amount of our modern Christmas celebrations can be traced back to the well-loved story of ‘A Christmas Carol’, by Charles Dickens. 

When you read ‘A Christmas Carol’, you discover almost a template of the ‘ideal Christmas’ which we still hold dear today.  Dickens seems to have selected the best of the Christmas celebrations of his day (he ignored some of the odd excesses) and packaged them in such a way as to give us traditions that we could accommodate and treasure – more than a century later.  

So, for instance, in A Christmas Carol, Christmas is a family day, with a family-centred feast.  In a home decorated with holly and candles the characters enjoy a roast turkey, followed by Christmas pudding.  They give their loved ones presents. Scrooge even gives donations to charity (!). 

And all the while outside, there is snow and frost, while church bells ring, and carol singers sing, and hope for mulled wine.  In ‘A Christmas Carol’ there is even a Father Christmas – in the shape of Christmas Present.    Only the Christmas tree itself came later, when Prince Albert imported ‘a pretty German toy’ that won the heart of the English court, and hence the rest of Victorian society. 

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Christmas:       Christmas and St Luke’s Gospel

It is to St Luke’s wonderful gospel that many Christians turn as the year draws to a close and Christmas approaches, for it is to St Luke that we owe the fullest account of the nativity. 

Luke alone tells us the story of Mary and the angel’s visit to her, and has thus given the Church the wonderful Magnificat of Mary. 

Luke alone tells us the story of Simeon’s hymn of praise, thus giving us the wonderful Nunc Dimmittis.  Imagine an Anglican evensong without the Nunc Dimmittis. 

Luke alone tells us the story of how the angels appeared to the shepherds and how the shepherds then visited the infant Jesus. So – imagine Christmas cards and nativity scenes every year without the shepherds arriving to visit baby Jesus.  Imagine school nativity plays without our children dressed as shepherds or sheep.  So – thank you, Luke!

What makes it so amazing is that Luke was not a Jew!  The man who wrote the fullest nativity story, and indeed more of the New Testament than any other single person, was a Gentile!

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Christmas:       Was Jesus really born on 25th December?

Almost certainly not.  But the story of how that date came to be chosen as his ‘birthday’ is one that stretches back long before his birth.

it seems to have started on the Greek island of Rhodes in 283 BC. That year the solstice fell on 25th December, and it was also the year that the Ancient World’s largest Sun God stature – the 34 metre, 200 tonne Colossus of Rhodes, was consecrated. 
 
By 46 BC, Julius Caesar had made 25th December the official winter solstice. 

In AD 274, the Roman Emperer Aureilian chose the winter solstice to be the birthday of the Sun God.  He also decreed that Sol Invictus (the unconquered sun) was ‘Lord of the Roman Empire’.

Fifty years after that, and Constantine had become the first pro-Christian Roman Emperor. He wanted the Church to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on 25thDecember.  Perhaps it was that to him, Jesus was more or less the same person as the mighty Sun God.  Or perhaps he felt that the ancient sun god’s association with goodness, light, warmth and life would help ease the people’s transition from paganism to Christianity.  Whatever the reason, the Church went along with it, and chose 25th December to be the date of Christmas.  And in an ancient mosaic in the crypt of St Peter’s Cathedral, Jesus is portrayed as adorned with sun rays and riding in a chariot – just like Sol Invictus.

As for the huge, bronze 200 tonne Sol Invictus?  He fell over during an earthquake, and was sold off for scrap metal in 654AD by an enterprising Arab scrap merchant.  Meanwhile, Jesus lives on…

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Christmas                   Who is ‘Santa Claus’?

On the whole British people are happy with the title ‘Father Christmas’, a suitably neutral name for the central character in children’s Christmases, writes David Winter.

In America, however, and by a process of cultural indoctrination increasingly in other English-speaking countries, the same red-coated and bearded fellow with his sack of presents is known as ‘Santa Claus’. They are, of course, one and the same person, distantly related to a bishop in Turkey in the fourth century (hence the red coat and hat – a cope and mitre originally). His name was Nicholas, and he was known as a patron of children, who would from time to time distribute gifts to them.

From that, believe it or not, comes the practice of giving presents at Christmas. We can’t give them to Jesus on his birthday, so we give them to someone else, in love and gratitude. That, at least, is the theory. Quite how the massive commercialization of such giving developed probably owes more to smart marketing than Christian generosity.

It’s not Nicholas’s fault, of course, nor of the Dutch Christians who took the practice to America as migrants 300 years ago. It might be a positive step at least to tell children who St Nicholas is, and perhaps even to mark his feast day, 6th December, when ‘Christmas’ presents are handed over in Holland

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26  December     St Stephen – the first martyr (died c 35 AD)

Have you ever stopped to consider that the very first martyr of the Christian Church was a deacon?  (But no, he wasn’t worked to death by his church.)  It was Stephen, one of the first seven deacons of the Christian Church.  He’d been appointed by the apostles to look after the distribution of alms to the faithful poor, and to help in the ministry of preaching.

Acts 6 and 7 tells us all that we know of his life, and the passages seem to suggest that he was an educated Hellenistic Jew.  Certainly Stephen’s famous challenge to the Jews reveals him to have been learned in the Scriptures and the history of Judaism, besides being eloquent and forceful.

Stephen's proclamation on the day of his martyrdom pulled no punches.  He told the Jews that God did not depend on the Temple. The Temple was but a temporary institution destined to be fulfilled and superseded by Christ, who was the prophet foreseen by Moses as the Messiah for whom the Jewish race had so long awaited. 

Stephen then challenged his hearers for resisting the Spirit and for killing the Christ, as their fathers before them had killed the prophets.  The Jews were so outraged by this that they stoned Stephen on the spot for blasphemy. 

As he died, Stephen saw a vision of Christ on God's right hand.  The men who were witness to the stoning placed their clothes at the feet of Saul (afterwards Paul), who (to his deep regret later) consented to Stephen's death.

By the fourth century Stephen had his own feast day in both East and West Churches.  When his supposed tomb was discovered in 415, his popularity soared.  His (supposed) relics were taken to Constantinople and then Rome, along with some stones (allegedly) used at his martyrdom.

Early on the Church made Stephen the patron saint of deacons.  In the late Middle Ages he was also invoked against headaches (?!).

In England, 46 ancient churches are dedicated to him, most of them built after the Norman Conquest.  In art Stephen is usually given a book of the Gospels and a stone, and sometimes the palm of martyrdom.

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26 December  On the Feast of Stephen 

Everyone knows that it was on the feast of Stephen that ‘good king Wenceslas looked on’.  After all, it’s in a Christmas carol - but why? There’s nothing about Christmas in it: a splendid young page who rustled up some flesh, wine and logs, an old man out in the snow (’deep and crisp and even’) and a kindly monarch. But Christmas?

The clue is in ‘the feast of Stephen’, which falls on 26th December, or ‘Boxing Day’, as we know it. That, too, has nothing to do with Christmas, beyond the fact that in the past people put a contribution in tradesmen’s boxes as a kind of Christmas present for their services during the year.

The Stephen whose feast day falls on the day after Christmas was the first Christian martyr. (You can read his story in the book of Acts). He was a member of the church in Jerusalem in its very early days, and found himself involved with six others in administering the allocation of food to those in need. The apostles, who were the leaders of the church, felt that it wasn’t appropriate for them to abandon preaching and ‘serve tables’, so they selected these seven to do the job for them. Stephen, however, quickly revealed hidden gifts as an eloquent spokesman for the Christian cause.

The Temple authorities, who had already had trouble with the apostles, were soon alerted to this new and hitherto unknown evangelist. They decided to make an example of him, thus firing a warning shot, as it were, across the bows of the apostles themselves. So they arrested Stephen and accused him of speaking against the two central elements of their religion - the ‘holy place’ (the Temple) and ‘the customs Moses handed down to us’ (the Law). It’s always dangerous to criticise a monument or a custom!

Given the right to defend himself, Stephen instead launched into an eloquent and at times biting account of Jewish history, culminating in the accusation that they had committed the worst possible sin by killing the Messiah. Inflamed by his words, his hearers abandoned any pretence of legal impartiality, rushing towards him and dragging him out of the city to a place where they began to stone him to death. Stephen, the rank and file Christian, died under a hail of rocks for claiming that Mary’s Son was the promised Messiah.

That is most probably the reason why the first martyr is honoured on the day after we celebrate the birth of the Saviour It’s a bit like the myrrh in the gifts of the Wise Men - a reminder, as we celebrate, that the bitter shadow of a cross is never far away from this story.

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26 December Look out for Wenceslas

Most of us probably know that on December 26th (the Feast of Stephen) ‘Good king Wenceslas’ looked out, writes David Winter. We probably also know that the snow lay round about, ‘deep and crisp and even’. Beyond that, he’s just someone in a carol that’s not often sung nowadays.

However, Wenceslas was a real person, a duke, and effectively king of Bohemia in the 10th century. In modern terms, he was Czechoslovakian. He was known as a generous and kind monarch, deeply Christian and given to good works. So the story in the carol by the Victorian hymn-writer J.M. Neale, while possibly fictitious, is at least in line with his recognised character. ‘Page and monarch’ braved the ‘bitter weather’ and the ‘cruel wind’s wild lament’ to take food and fuel to a poor man living rough.

Neale’s carol was enormously popular in the 19th century, because it perfectly expressed Victorian Christian ideals of benevolence and alms-giving.  Christian men of ‘wealth and rank’ are urged to help the poor, and so ‘find blessing’. Ignoring the ‘wealth and rank and men’ bit, it’s still good advice, at Christmas or any other time.

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28 December  Holy Innocents

The death of a very young child is perhaps the hardest grief of all to bear.  So the 28th December is a very poignant day in the church calendar.  It is when the worldwide Church joins with bereaved parents to grieve the loss of babies and young children.  For Holy Innocents day recalls the massacre of the young male children of Bethlehem by Herod the Great. 

Herod had been told by the magi, or wise men, that a great king had been born in Bethlehem, and he felt shaken.  How could a child in unimportant little Bethlehem be so powerful that the stars in the night sky honoured His birth?!  Herod took the magi so seriously that he decided to try and kill this new young rival.  He decreed that every male baby of two years and under should be killed.  (Matthew 2:1-18). 

Bethlehem was not a large place, and Bible commentators estimate that between six and 25 infants were slaughtered by Roman soldiers.  Their mothers were inconsolable at the death of their babies, as indeed mothers have always been.

The death of these innocent baby boys of Bethlehem became a feast-day in the western Church by the 4th century.  This was because the Church considered them to be martyrs because they not only died for Christ, but instead of Christ.

Down the centuries, the tragic loss of the Holy Innocents has touched the imagination and hearts of poets, preachers and artists.  Though heart-broken parents still grieve today, the Church can offer them one firm assurance:  that young children who die to this world will undoubtedly “this day be with Me in Paradise.”   The One who eagerly said “Suffer the little children to come unto Me” will be the last person to turn them away.   

 

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1 January        The naming of Jesus

It is Matthew and Luke who tell the story of how the angel instructed that Mary’s baby was to be named Jesus - a common name meaning ‘saviour’.  The Church recalls the naming of Jesus on 1 January - eight days after 25 December (by the Jewish way of reckoning days).  For in Jewish tradition, the male babies were circumcised and named on their eighth day of life.

For early Christians, the name of Jesus held a special significance.  In Jewish tradition, names expressed aspects of personality. Jesus’ name permeated His ministry, and it does so today:  we are baptised in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38), we are justified through the name of Jesus (1 Cor 6:11); and God the Father has given Jesus a name above all others (Phil 2:9).  All Christian prayer is through ‘Jesus Christ our Lord’, and it is ‘at the name of Jesus’ that one day every knee shall bow.

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1 January        Have you ever wondered where the name ‘Jesus’ comes from?  

The name Jesus is a transliteration of a name that occurs in several languages.  It is of Hebrew origin, ‘Yehosua’, or Joshua.  Or there is the Hebrew-Aramaic form, ‘Yesua’.  In Greek, it became ‘ ?ησο?ς’ (I?soûs),  and in Latin it became ‘Iesus’.    
The meaning of the name is ‘Yahweh delivers’ or ‘Yahweh rescues’, or ‘Yahweh is salvation’.   No wonder the angel Gabriel in Luke 1:26-33 told Mary to name her baby Jesus: “because He will save His people from their sins”. 

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2 January        Basil the Great - champion of the Church

Basil was most people’s idea of the perfect diocesan bishop. He was a theologian of distinction, who as a monk devoted himself to much prayer and teaching.  He leapt to the defence of the Church from the persecution of the Arian emperor Valens, but also appreciated great secular literature of the time, gave away his inheritance to the poor, knew how to run a soup kitchen, and counted thieves and prostitutes among his converts.  Not your everyday bishop!

Basil (c330-79) came from a distinguished and pious family, and he had the best education available at Caesarea, Constantinople and Athens.  He decided to become a monk with Gregory of Nazianzus, and settled as a hermit near Neo-Caesarea.   He became bishop of Caesarea in 370, with 50 suffragan bishops to look after.  It was the time of the great Arian heresy, and Basil would come to be seen as one of the great champions of the Church, defending it from secular encroachments.

Basil loved his people – and was known for his generosity and care for the poor – both through food and medical care.  He was a great preacher – preaching both morning and evening to vast congregations, and organising services of psalms before daybreak. 

He was interested in monastic legislation, and to this day, nearly all monks and nuns of the Greek Church follow his rule.  His emphasis was on community life, liturgical prayer, and manual work, rather than on solitary asceticism.  His rule allowed for almsgiving, hospitals and guest-houses.   Basil wrote some important works on the Holy Spirit.

He died at 49, worn out by austerities, hard work and disease.  He was so loved that even strangers mourned his death, and in the centuries that followed, many artists painted pictures of him.  His cult spread rapidly in the West, through Greek monks in Italy and through St Benedict admitting that his rule had been inspired by “our holy father Basil.”

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2 January        Basil and Gregory -  lives of costly discipleship

‘Discipline’ is now virtually a banned word, along with ‘risk’, ‘problem’ and ‘failure’. They seem to have been replaced respectively by ‘focus’, ‘safety‘, ‘challenge’ and ‘opportunity’. On the occasions when we do recognise and applaud the virtue of discipline, it’s usually in the lives and activities of soldiers, police officers, dressage horses and the dog. But every year the Church Calendar remembers (on 2nd January) the lives of two outstanding leaders of the fourth century Church, Basil and Gregory.  The hall mark of their lives was an iron self-discipline. Life-long friends since they were students together, they committed themselves to an almost ferocious austerity. In fact, both died early from the long-term consequences of extreme self-denial.

Bishops in the Eastern Church, they looked more to the new city of Constantinople than to Rome, but they both faced powerful opposition. Basil’s unwavering commitment to the faith earned him many enemies, not only from secular sources (political and even imperial) but also from within the Church. Gregory, a less robust character, faced similar insults and even physical violence when he set out to reform the church at Constantinople. Eventually this opposition cost him his bishopric.

Basil was an activist, Gregory a contemplative, yet their lives followed a similar path of costly discipleship. Basil was born into a wealthy and influential family, but during a time of famine he felt it was his Christian duty to distribute the entire family inheritance in the form of food for the poor in his city. From then on, he lived an austere, even frugal life, and died at the age of 49, worn out by disease and physical weakness. Gregory too had poor health, largely through self-imposed poverty.

In the declining years of the Roman Empire and in an atmosphere of moral laxity they believed that as Christian leaders they should set an example. ‘Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord ‘, says the Bible. Perhaps modern Christianity is a little too quick to see discipline in terms of subjection and punishment. But ‘those whom the Lord loves he disciplines’.

Basil and Gregory, whatever we think of their lifelong regime of self-denial, were clear that their life of discipline was motivated by love of the same Lord who in love disciplined them. Without going to the extremes that they did, perhaps a little godly discipline might help us to build a healthier relationship with the God we try to ‘trust and obey.’

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5 January        Simeon Stylites - one of the weirder saints!

Quite frankly, this hermit was about as weird as they come.  But he loved God, and God blessed him, strange though he was.  So perhaps Simeon Stylites (390 – 459) should be the patron saint of all REALLY eccentric people.

Simeon was the son of a shepherd on the Syrian border of Cilicia.  He joined a monastery near Antioch, where he practised mortifications and penances that nearly killed him. When the abbot dismissed him in disgust as crazy, Simeon moved on to Telanissos (nowadays Dair Sem’an) and spent his first Lent there in a total fast.  He was found unconscious on Easter Day.  After three years in that monastery he felt life was too easy, and moved himself to the top of the nearby mountain, where he chained himself to a rock.  He began to be talked about, and more and more people came to see him.

Simeon did not want their company, and so planned his escape:  to the top of a pillar.  For the next four years he lived on top of a pillar that was nine feet high.  More people came by, and so Simeon in desperation added to his pillar, until it grew to be 18 feet high.  Still people came to see him, and so three years later, Simeon built himself a real skyscraper – a pillar 33 feet high, from the top of which he enjoyed 10 years of comparative solitude. 

Still people came to see him – both Christians and pagans, and so Simeon decided to somehow build a pillar that was 60 feet high and six feet wide.  Here he found peace and quiet, and so here he lived for the last 20 years of his life.   People still came to see him, and tried to catch the ‘sacred’ lice that fell off his body. They enjoyed his twice daily exhortations to everyone below.  Even some emperors came by for a look – Theodosius, Leo and Marcian. 

A scholar has written of Simeon: “His preaching was practical, kindly, and free from fanaticism.  ... In an age of licentiousness and luxury he gave unique and abiding witness to the need for penance and prayer; his way of life provided a spectacle at once challenging, repulsive and awesome.”

Simeon finally died and was buried at Antioch.  Perhaps he would have enjoyed the chance to take the plinth at Trafalgar Square!

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6 January        Epiphany

On 6th January we celebrate Epiphany - the visit of the wise men to the baby Jesus.  But who were these wise men?  No one knows for sure.  Matthew calls them ‘Magi’, and that was the name of an ancient caste of a priestly kind from Persia.  It wasn’t until the third century that they were called kings - by a church father, Tertullian. 

Another church father, Origin, assumed there were three - to correspond with the gifts given.  Later Christian interpretation came to understand gold as a symbol of wisdom and wealth, incense as a symbol of worship and sacrifice, and myrrh as a symbol of healing - and even embalming.  Certainly Jesus challenged and set aright the way in which the world handled all three of these things.  Since the 8th century, the magi have had the names Balthasar, Caspar and Melchior.

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6 January        Where did the Wise Men come from?

Magi from the East – it isn’t a lot to go on.  The Magi had originally been a religious caste among the Persians.  Their devotion to astrology, divination and the interpretation of dreams led to an extension in the meaning of the word, and by the first century the Magi in Matthew’s gospel could have been astrologers from outside of Persia.   Some scholars believe they might have come from what was then Arabia Felix, or as we would say today, southern Arabia. 

Certainly, in the first century astrology was practised there, and it was the region where the Queen of Sheba had lived.  She of course had visited Solomon and would have heard the prophecies about how one day a Messiah would be born to the Israelites and become their king.

Matthew’s gospel (chapter 2) is clear that the Magi asked Herod: ‘Where is the One who has been born king of the Jews?  We saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.’  So it is possible that in southern Arabia the Queen of Sheba’s story of how a Messiah would one day be sent to the Israelites had survived.  Certainly, there are a number of other early legends that connect southern Arabia with Solomon’s Israel.   

To many people this makes sense:  that the ancient stories of a Messiah, linked to later astrological study, prompted these alert and god-fearing men to the realisation that something very stupendous was happening in Israel.  They realised that after all these centuries, the King of the Jews, the Messiah, was about to be born.  

One more interesting thing that gives weight to the theory that the magi came from southern Arabia is this:  if you study any map of Palestine as it was during biblical times, you will find that the old Arabian caravan routes all entered Palestine ‘from the East’.  

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6 January        What about the gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh?

The story of the coming of the Magi grew in the telling.  By the 6th century they had acquired names: Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.  By medieval times they were considered to be kings.  Whoever they were, we do know from Matthew that they brought three gifts to Jesus.  

What about their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh?  While we cannot know for sure what was in the minds of first century Magi, one Victorian scholar has offered a possible explanation as to the significance of their gifts.  He was the Rev John Henry Hopkins, an American Episcopalian minister, who in 1857 wrote his much-loved Christmas carol, ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are’.

Gold, said John Henry Hopkins, was a gift that would have been given to a king.  Frankincense had traditionally been brought by priests as they worshipped God in the Temple.   Myrrh was a spice that the ancients used in preparing bodies for burial. 

If that is true, then you could say that the Wise Men, in choosing their gifts for this infant, honoured Jesus with gold because He was King of the Jews, with frankincense because He was to be worshipped as divine; and with myrrh, because He would also become a sacrifice and die for His people.

The Wise Men were the very first gentiles ever to worship Jesus.  What faith they had!  They travelled for months over difficult terrain, they never saw any evidence of Jesus’ kingship, His divinity or His sacrificial death.  They worshipped Him through faith in God’s promises about Him. Isaiah foresaw this response to Jesus: ‘Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.’  The Magi’s eyes of faith saw clearly and far into the future. 

Compare that with the High Priest and religious leaders whom the Wise Men saw in Jerusalem when they first arrived.  These head priests knew all about the prophecies of their own coming Messiah, but NOT ONE Jewish religious leader travelled to look for Him in Bethlehem.   And it is only six miles down the road!

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8 January        Nathalan - an early farmer in Scotland

Many saints have fed the poor, but not many were interested in actual food production.  Nathalan (died c.678) was, so perhaps he might be the patron saint of anyone who produces food – and gives most of it away to those in need.  

Scotland in the 7th century must have been a hungry place, especially as far north as the Aberdeen district.   In any case, according to his Legend in the Aberdeen breviary, Nathalan was a nobleman who decided to cultivate his land as a way of serving God.  He wanted to feed the people in times of famine.  It is not known what food he managed to grow so far north, but Nathalan was well-loved for providing what he could. 

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12 January      Antony Pucci - poor, plain and tongue-tied

If you have nothing much going for you, Antony Pucci (1819-92) should be your patron saint.   He came from nowhere – a peasant family in Tuscany.  He went nowhere – he spent his life as a parish priest in the Tuscan city of Viareggio.   He was unattractive to look at.  He wasn’t good with words – people found him awkward and shy.

So why do people still remember him today?   Because Antony Pucci used the one gift he did have in the service of others.  He was an excellent organiser, and he served his people brilliantly.  His care for the sick in the epidemics of 1854 and 1866 was outstanding.  He even set up the first seaside nursing homes for poorly children.

Antony Pucci used to say that organisation is the servant of charity, not its substitute.  But he used his gift for organisation as a way of showing his charity, and for that he was loved.

So – if your family is nothing to shout about, if you wince when you look in the mirror in the morning, if you stand tongue-tied in most social situations, don’t despair.  Ask God to show you what gift He HAS given you, and use it in the service of others.  And in giving to them, you will receive!   It is when we lose our lives for His sake, in His service, that we truly find them.

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14 January      Felix of Nola - saved by a spider’s web

What do you do when you find a large spider web in your house?  If you ever feel some sympathy for the spider who went to all that trouble, then Felix is a good patron saint for you.  He was saved by such a spider, spinning such a web. 

Felix had been born to a Syrian soldier who had retired to Nola, near Naples in Italy.   When his father died, Felix gave his property and money away, and was ordained by St Maximus of Nola.  Felix went to work with him, ministering to the people of Nola. 

Then Decius, the Roman Emperor, began another persecution of the Christians.  Maximus escaped to the mountains, but Felix was arrested and badly beaten.  Legend has it that he was rescued – and freed from captivity - by an angel.  In any case, Felix followed Maximus and found him sick and in need.  Felix hid him in an empty building, and prayed for God’s protection.  The soldiers were out looking for the two men, but then a spider arrived at the door of the building where they were hiding.  The spider spun such a magnificent web across the door that it fooled the imperial soldiers into thinking the building was long abandoned.  The spider saved Maximus and Felix that day, and the two men stayed on the run until Decius’ death in 251.

After that, the people of Nola wanted Felix as their bishop.  But Felix refused, and returned to farming his lands; giving the poor most of the food that he managed to grow.   Though Felix went on to die naturally, he was still thought of as a martyr, or ‘witness’ because he had suffered torture, imprisonment and privations in the persecution.   Felix did not mind: he served a King who was not of this world, and he looked forward to a better future life with that King in a new heaven and a new earth.

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17 January      Anthony of Egypt -  hermit who defied an emperor

If your Christmas and New Year break included just too many people and even a bout of indigestion, then St Antony may be the saint for you.  He was a hermit-monk with a reputation for making poorly people feel better. 

Antony was born in Coma (Upper Egypt) in 251, and at 20 became an ascetic.  He settled down in the complete solitude of a deserted fort in Pispir, where he spent the next 20 years busy fighting the whole range of usual hermit temptations, such as having queenly devils approach you for marriage, and other hazards like that.

In 306 Antony felt able to face the world again, and so he began visiting with some other hermits.  One was Paul, and the story goes that the day they met, a raven provided lunch for them by dropping a loaf of bread nearby. 

Antony was a godly man, and would pray for people.  Stories went round that those he prayed for were healed, and so he became known as a miracle-worker.  He was certainly brave:  when in 311 the Roman Emperor Maximinus was persecuting the Christians, Antony went to Alexandria to encourage the church there to stand firm.   Years later he was stoutly defending the Christian faith in disputes with heretics.

Antony died in 356, but even hundreds of years later he was not forgotten.  A medical band of people adopted his name, and thus The Order of Hospitallers of Saint Antony was founded  (c.1100, in La Motte).  It became a pilgrimage centre for those suffering from ergotism (called St Antony’s Fire - a serious form of fungi poisoning). 

Antony was a tremendously popular saint throughout the Middle Ages.  By then he was seen as the patriarch of monks, and a healer of both men and animals.  Antony even gave us the word ‘tantony’, a diminutive applied to the smallest pig in a litter, and to the smallest bell in a peal of bells. 

The early church father, Athanasius, wrote The Life of Antony.  This moving biography helped to convert the great Augustine. 

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NEW  *18 January      Amy Carmichael – founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship

Not many teenagers, on becoming a Christian, will devote themselves to winning others for Christ in a foreign land. Amy was such a person. She left Britain to live in a tiny village in Southern India. Here, for the next 56 years, Amy rescued hundreds of orphaned and vulnerable children, and served her Lord in Dohnavur.

Amy Wilson Carmichael had been born in Ireland on 16th December 1867, into a devout  Presbyterian family in Belfast. When she was 16, Amy had become a Christian, and decided to start a mission for mill girls. When she came into contact with the Keswick movement, she sensed a call to serve abroad.

At first, Amy planned to go to China, but ill health prevented her from travelling. Later, for 15 months, she worked in Japan, but the climate was detrimental to her health.  In 1895, she went to India to evangelise around Bangalore, and then, in order to escape rising political violence, she moved on to Dohnavur.

Here she met a girl called Preena, who had escaped being a slave in a Hindu temple. From that moment, Amy knew she had found her true calling.  She dedicated the rest of her life to rescuing girls and boys who had been given by parents or relatives to serve in the temple as prostitutes.

Amy donned Indian dress and learnt about the Hindu culture and showed the love of Christ through her compassion. Overcoming much hardship and danger, Amy expanded her evangelistic work to establish a centre for homes, schools and a hospital. The Dohnavur Fellowship still continues today.

In 1931, Amy suffered a severe injury that virtually confined her to bed for the next 20 years. Despite this, she wrote 13 of her 35 books and many thousands of letters. Amy based her life on prayer and trusted God for all her needs. She died on 18th January, aged 83.      

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21 January      Meinrad - victim of grievous bodily harm

The more things change, the more they remain the same.  You could read Meinrad’s story today in the newspapers of any large city.  He was born near Wurtemberg of a free peasant family, and became a monk at Reichenau (Switzerland).  In 829 he moved to Einsiedeln to be a hermit, where he lived quietly for the next 25 years. 

Then one night there was a knock on his door.  Meinrad courteously welcomed two strangers who had come to see him.  Things took a turn for the bad – they demanded money or treasure.  Meinrad explained he had none.  They got angry – and savagely beat him to death with their clubs.  The life of a gentle, godly man was extinguished.  The murderers were caught and executed, and the local people were left to grieve and share their shock and sadness at the pointless death of such a godly man.

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21 January     St Agnes - child martyr of Rome

Agnes should be the patron saint of all the young Christian girls alive today who live in areas of the world where they face kidnap, rape, forced marriage, persecution and even death – simply because they are Christian.   

Agnes, born c 291, probably came from a noble Roman family.  She converted to Christianity at the age of 10, and took a vow of chastity.  When she was only 13, the son of a high-ranking Roman official wanted to marry her.  But Agnes refused, declaring herself given totally to Christ. 

This was not a safe thing to say in 304.  It was the time of the Roman Empire’s last great wave of violence against Christians – the so-called Persecution of Diocletian.  Christians were hated.  So Agnes was condemned to death. Some accounts say she was burned at the stake, while Ambrose claims her death came by sword. She may have been sentenced to serve as a virgin sacrifice to pagan deities. Beheading has also been mentioned.

In any event, Agnes became a virgin-martyr, and thus became patron saint of chastity, girls, virgins, engaged couples and rape survivors.   In the decades after her death her tomb became a place of pilgrimage, as other Christians sought courage for themselves by remembering her fearless witness. 

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25 January      The Conversion of St Paul

January is a month of the beginning of great things!  As well as the naming of the Son of God, we celebrate the conversion of the greatest ever apostle of the Christian faith.  Many books have been written on Paul, and here is the briefest of introductions.

He was a Jew, born as ‘Saul’ at Tarsus, and brought up by the rabbi Gamaliel as a Pharisee.  A devout, fanatical Jew, Saul persecuted the Christians, and watched with satisfaction the first Christian martyrdom, the stoning of Stephen.  Then on his way to Damascus Saul had a vision of Christ that stopped him, literally, in his tracks.  He realised that this Jesus whom he was persecuting was in fact the Messiah for whom he had longed. 

Saul changed overnight.  He took a new name, Paul, and became an evangelist for the cause of Christ.  He became a leader in the early Church, and his special calling was as an apostle to the Gentiles.  He wrote many epistles to the young churches he founded - and thus, inadvertently, wrote a great part of the New Testament.  

Life as the greatest apostle was hardly full of perks: he was stoned, beaten, mobbed, homeless, hated, imprisoned, and finally martyred.  Tradition has it that he was beheaded in Rome during the persecution of Nero in AD 64, and buried where the basilica of St Paul ‘outside the walls’ now stands.  His mighty faith in Christ has kindled similar belief in many hundreds of millions of people down the centuries. 

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25 January      St Paul - the first Christian intellectual

This month, on 25th January, the Church celebrates probably the most famous conversion of all. At least, what happened to a young man called Saul on the road to Damascus has become a byword for all instant conversions - what is known as a ‘damascene’ moment. Saul was a devout Jew, a Pharisee, a student of Gamaliel and a fierce critic of the followers of Jesus, then a very new sect on the religious scene.

On his way to Damascus to organise a purge of Christians in that city, he was blinded by a bright light and heard a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ He asked the identity of the voice, and it replied, ‘Jesus, whom you are persecuting’. Stunned by the experience, he followed further instructions which led him to a Christian man in Damascus, who prayed with him. As he did, Saul’s sight was restored.

The experience convinced him that Jesus - crucified in Jerusalem four or five years earlier - was in fact the Messiah and had risen from the dead. After a period of instruction, Saul was baptised and took the name by which history has recognised him, Paul. At first, some Christians were wary about the reality of his conversion, but over a period of time he was accepted and indeed eventually recognised as an ’apostle’, a ‘special messenger’ of Jesus Christ.

His intellectual stature and leadership gifts quickly marked him out, and within a few years he became a leading figure in the emerging Christian Church, preaching and founding churches all over the Middle East, largely of Gentile converts. He was eventually martyred in Rome, probably in 65AD.

Paul was the first intellectual of the Christian Church, the man who was able to set the events of the life and teaching of Jesus, and especially his death and resurrection, into a coherent theology, with its roots very clearly in the Jewish faith of his own upbringing. He’s not always easy to follow. Even the New Testament admits that: ‘there are some things (in his letters) hard to understand’ (2 Peter 3:16). But at the same time he gave the new faith a foundation and credibility which have stood it well down the centuries.

Many people think of Paul as a rather negative, narrow misogynist, but even a quick reading of his letters actually reveals a person of great warmth, who evoked enormous affection and devotion from others. ‘You would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me!’ he writes to the Christians at Galatia. He was, of course, a man of his time and culture, in days when women were disregarded in terms of status and leadership.

But read his letters, and see how large a role women play in them and how much scope he gave them to lead and teach in the Church. In terms of the first century, St Paul was a dangerous liberal!  So all in all, the amazing Paul of Tarsus deserves a bit of celebrating on 25th January.

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26 January      Timothy and Titus - how local church leaders should be!

Timothy and Titus are the saints for you if you’ve been a Christian for some time, and now realise that God wants you to move into some form of leadership.  A daunting prospect!

The books of First and Second Timothy and Titus are what are known as the three pastoral letters, where Paul writes to ministers in charge of important churches instead of writing to the churches themselves.  Paul gives both Timothy and Titus explicit instructions for how to shepherd the sheep in their care.  Timothy had been given the responsibility of the church at Ephesus, and Titus the care of the church at Crete.   Both Timothy and Titus were young men, and both felt quite daunted at the task ahead of them!

Timothy, half Jewish, had met Paul when he was still a child, living with his mother Eunice at Lystra.  Paul had come to their city and preached, and they had both become Christians.  Timothy had then accompanied Paul on his second missionary journey – a great training experience.  But experience is given to us so that we might in turn become productive – and in due course Paul entrusted the vastly important church of Ephesus into Timothy’s care.  This church was so vibrant in its faith that within 50 years so many Ephesians became Christians that the city’s pagan temples were almost forsaken.  A huge responsibility!

Titus was a gentile, almost certainly another convert of Paul’s.  Paul had used Titus as a trouble-shooter with the Corinthians, and when Titus was successful in that, gave him a real bit of trouble: the church at Crete.  Again, Titus served his Lord faithfully, even in this most difficult of situations.

So, if you are going to attempt any leadership for God, why not make time to read the three pastoral epistles first?  They have been an invaluable handbook for Christian leaders for 20 centuries, and are full of spiritual wisdom and good common sense.  If they worked for Timothy and Titus, they may work for you as well.

Timothy became the first bishop of Ephesus, and was finally martyred when he opposed pagan festivals (probably in honour of Dionysius). He was killed by stones and clubs, easily to hand during the pagan festival of Katagogia.  His supposed relics were translated to Constantinople in 356. 

Titus went on to become the first Bishop of Crete, and is believed to have died there, though history does not tell us how.  His relics are supposed to be buried in Crete, except for his head, which was allegedly taken to Venice in 823.

Both Timothy and Titus were good and faithful servants, and could look back on lives well spent. Imagine - one day you will stand before the Lord, as well, and say: ‘This is what I did with the leadership role you entrusted to me.  Was I a good and faithful servant, too?’

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27 January      Angela Merici -  helping children in need

With international concern about the welfare of children, Angela is a good saint to remember as the year gets underway.  Not only did she herself survive a harsh childhood, but she went on to dedicate her own life to helping children in need.

Angela was born near Lake Garda, in Desenzano, where she was orphaned as a young child.   The 1480s were hardly an easy time for orphaned girls, but somehow Angela survived to grow into her teens, when she became a Franciscan tertiary.  However miserable her own childhood, Angela chose to let it work for good in her life: she decided to devote her own life to the education of poor girls.  Girls!  This was a time when most of the men were illiterate! 

But Angela was an audacious woman, and she had only just begun. She and some close companions set to work in the name of Christ, seeking out the poor families in their community.   Angela taught the young girls all that she could, and prayed with them, assuring them that even they were precious in the eyes of their Creator.

All of which left the Roman Catholic Church badly baffled.  What should they do with religious sisters who had taken no vows, still wore their lay clothes, and who, instead of walling themselves up in some nunnery to lead an enclosed life, spent their days in a decidedly mobile, highly visible fashion – out and about in community support?

It wasn’t until 1565, some 25 years AFTER Angela’s death, that the Church decided it approved of such work.  By then the Ursuline nuns, as they were by then called, were going from strength to strength.  They still flourish today, with some 2400 Ursuline Sisters in 27 provinces on six continents, and have been well described as ‘the oldest and most considerable teaching order of women in the RC Church.’ 

It took nearly 300 years, but in 1807 the Roman Catholic Church decided that Angela, unveiled, unenclosed and unsupervised as she had been, had been a saint after all – and ‘made’ her one.

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31 January      Maedoc of Ferns

Are you wondering about which charities to support this year?   Does it matter to you if your money is used wisely or not?   If so, then Maedoc of Ferns is the patron saint for you this month.  He certainly knew how to deal with people who would waste his money.

Maedoc (d 626) was born in Connacht, and educated in Leinster and St David’s Pembrokeshire before returning to Ireland in the early 7th century.  He founded a small monastery on land given by Brandrub, prince of Leinster, at Ferns, in Co. Wexford.  He also founded monasteries at Drumlaane and Rossinver.  He must have been loved, because after his death his bell, his staff and reliquary were carefully preserved – you can see them today in the National Museum (Dublin) or the Library of Armagh cathedral. 

Maedoc had a reputation for self-denial, holiness and charity.  But he was not ‘stupidly good’.  The story is told of how one day some spurious beggars hid their fine clothes and dressed in rags, and came to the monastery pleading for his help to buy new sets of clothes.  Maedoc invited them in, and did some investigating.  When he discovered their fine clothes hidden outside,  he gave them away to real beggars nearby, and then sent the imposters off in their dirty rags, with neither new clothes nor alms.  Rather cleverly done!